Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a toner, an image forming apparatus, an image forming method, and a toner storage unit.
Description of the Related Art
A technique of externally adding small-size inorganic particles as a fluidizer to toner is generally known for adjusting fluidity and chargeability of the toner to achieve good development characteristics.
On the other hand, some small-size inorganic particles undesirably separate from the surface of toner and migrate to carriers and photoconductors. Such a problem is remarkably caused by color toner for color printing, compared with monochrome toner for black-and-white printing, since color toner contains a large amount of fluidizer for greatly improving fluidity and enhancing developability and image quality. As the fluidizer migrates to the photoconductor, the fluidizer adheres to or accumulates on a photoconductor cleaner or a transfer unit, causing deterioration of image quality. While imparting high fluidity to the toner, the fluidizer may separate from the surface of the toner and migrate to carriers or photoconductors or contaminate the inside of a developing device.
In addition, since the small-size inorganic particles tend to be embedded in the toner surface due to mechanical stress received in a developing device, the toner surface and the carrier surface are brought into direct contact with each other and the physical adhesion force therebetween increases. As a result, developability and transferability of the developer deteriorate over time and the developer is unable to exhibit sufficient durability.